My problem of 10kg overweight hand luggage had not magically disappeared in the night but the Internet revealed a potential way of avoiding the £40 per kilogram fine. There was a post office at the airport where £40 would let me send at least 10kg home.
Just before seven I said goodbye to my last room in Japan and pushed my two bags into the lift. The others were meeting me at the hotel and when I got out I saw Kosuke and Yoko walking from the station.
I was annoyed at myself that I was not better prepared; the last obstacle had crept up on me but it was my own fault for not reading the luggage restrictions more carefully. Yoko was adamant that I should stop worrying because I already had a solution, but I didn’t feel like worrying was my choice.
Kizuna met us on the train, and Il Heung came too, which was a nice surprise. So, on leaving Japan I had an entourage of four people and a wealth of expertise from three different nationalities.
Our train route required us to change stations by crossing a bridge and going through a shopping mall, all in less than six minutes. I had done the journey before but never with an entourage. I explained the route and the time limit to the others and when the train doors opened we were first out.
Racing down the escalator and to the ticket gates my ticket wouldn’t work. Kosuke snatched my ticket and shoved his wallet containing his travel card into my hand. He ran off while I went through the ticket gate with his wallet. It was a bit like a war film where the injured guy gets saved by the hero who runs off alone to create a diversion.
Outside the station Il Heung, Yoko and Kizuna had gone quite far ahead before realising they were alone. I found them and then looked back to Kosuke, he was running towards us and we regrouped at the bottom of the escalator to the bridge.
While I pushed my big bag Yoko steamed ahead with my hand luggage, through crowds of people coming the opposite way. I barged my way through too, forcing people to give way. I had a big bag to argue my point and I was leaving the continent in a few hours, a licence to be determined.
In the other station I bought a ticket with Il Heung while the others went through with their travel cards. Someone took my case and when I entered the station the others were already on the platform waiting for me, and our train. We had done it, I congratulated them like a proud boss and they mocked me for it. I thought back to an old computer in the library of a school that isn’t standing any more. After asking me lots of questions it made me laugh by telling me that my ideal career was… Army Officer. Then again, maybe it had been right after all.
Our unit divided. Me and Yoko sat dwelling on one side of the train while the others sat opposite playing Indian poker and giggling.
Yoko asked me for some paper and I gave her my notebook, there was a blank page next to a list of my trip’s expenditure. She asked for a pen and started to cross out all the prices. First I thought this was quirky but then I got angry because later I wanted to work out where all my money had gone. “Why are you doing that?” I said, she didn’t answer, “Stop it.” I grabbed the pen from her. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I am annoying,” she said.
At 8:30, two and a half hours before my flight, we got out of the train and into a lift for the departure floor of Narita Airport. The queue to the Virgin desk had only been open for ten minutes but it was already crowded with people. I eyed the luggage of my fellow passengers. There was a man with six different bags piled precariously on his trolley. I found this immensely reassuring until a gaggle of six children joined him.
The woman at the desk looked confused when our group surrounded her but only one passport was handed over. Actually, at that point my entourage was causing me a little stress because this wasn’t a normal flight, I had things to explain and audiences make me nervous. I had changed the date of my flight and still needed to pay a fee of £50. She checked in my bag and then weighed my hand luggage. She seemed pretty surprised when 16kg came up on her screen. I explained how I had been confused by information on the website but she was in no mood for excuses.
“Please can you let me go to the post office and get rid of some of the weight,” I pleaded
“Ok,” she said, “but come back once you do it. You have got an hour and a half before boarding starts.”
Our unit had a new mission.
While they ran off with my luggage to find the post office I had to go to another desk to pay for my flight change. The last cash in my wallet disappeared.
When I found the others again; they had already gone to the post office, bought a box and begun filling it with things from my bag.
An American woman was also at the post office trying to send things home. She wore a long furry black coat, round gold earrings and her hair was the colour of someone’s decision. Her manner was very self-assured but her helplessness was obvious. She was trying to speak only English and this had gotten her as far as a price in Yen for sending her box home. She asked me what that price would be in dollars. Yoko helped me answer but she didn’t like the result. I suggested sending it by ship, which is what I had been doing and she liked that price much more. As I filled in the form for my box, Yoko helped the American lady. God bless the bilingual.
The two heaviest things in my hand luggage were my Xbox and my Laptop. I was taking them as hand luggage because they wouldn’t survive any other way. I knew that the Xbox alone weighed 5.5kg so there combined weight would still be over what was allowed. I had learnt from the Internet that Virgin allows a shoulder bag to be taken on board with the kind of items people use on a flight; books, a CD player etc. Someone suggested I put my laptop in my shoulder bag and sneak it on that way. I didn’t like the idea because I didn’t think I would get away with it, but my laptop fitted perfectly into the shoulder bag so this became the plan.
As we were discussing this, the American woman came over to our group.
“Would you people like these?” she said holding out a clear plastic bag filled with small toiletries. “What we do is we take all these things from the hotels we stay in and then give them to homeless people. There’s everything in here; shampoo, conditioner and even sunscreen.” None of us said anything. In my head I was analysing how charitable it is giving homeless people things they don’t need that you got for free. To be kind, Yoko took the bag and the woman walked away happy.
With 10KG all packed up ready to send home I needed a cash machine to pay for the postage. Yoko and Kizuna went off separately to ask people where such a thing could be found and both came back with the same location. Since we had to go back to the Virgin desk afterwards Kizuna offered to go and stand in the queue for me until I arrived. I turned down her offer because I had suspicions that getting cash would take some time. Yoko and I went off in search of cash machines while the others stayed with all my things.
I’d been having bad luck with cash machines lately. I no longer owned a Japanese bank account worth accessing but I did have my English one that had been working for 80% of my time in Japan. Recently though, every cash machine I had used throughout the land came up with different errors and refused to give me money. I had checked my account online and knew it to be fine, I could use my credit cards in shops with no problems but cash machines were not on my side.
I told Yoko my fears and she became frustrated at my always expecting bad things to happen. We tried several different machines, I tried all my cards and lots of different buttons but my money was refusing to head East. I sighed and sighed and sighed, life was throwing me problems at a rapid rate.
Yoko was not sighing, I think she was enjoying the race against time, the challenges to be faced and the adrenaline they produced. I on the other hand, was miserable. When I am miserable I frown and I sigh and let it out. “Smile,” said Yoko and I wanted to hit her.
I have a problem with people telling others to just, “smile.” To me it means, “I don’t like to see people look sad so please smile so that I feel better.” It doesn’t mean, “I want you to feel better” because getting someone feeling miserable to smile is like covering scars with
make-up or giving homeless people cologne so that they smell better for a day. If you really want to make someone feel better then you say, “Are you ok? What’s wrong?” or you change the subject, provide a solution, make them laugh or just leave them alone.
To me sighing is good because it expresses how you feel but trying to hide it is bad because it is like ignoring a problem. Voicing my expectations of bad things to happen is another of my habits and it comes from an irrational belief that stating my worries makes them less likely to come true.
Yoko has a different philosophy. She believes that everyone has a small atmosphere surrounding them. If you smile, laugh and say positive things then your atmosphere will be positive and good things will happen. To sigh, to worry and to complain creates a bad atmosphere and life becomes harder.
Neither opinion is really true; the world works in various shades of chaos, differing only in their subtlety. All this might sound like waffle but in my last hours in Japan Yoko was making me angry by constantly telling me to “smile” while I was making her cry with my bad atmosphere. I couldn’t understand her; we were both working for the same cause and I wasn’t giving up, I was just miserable with the situation and felt I had every right to be. She couldn’t understand me; I was creating such a bad atmosphere that I was making my own problems worse and dragging everyone down with me, we would find a solution, that was certain, so why not get to it feeling positive.
Yoko lent me the £25 I needed to send the box home and we rejoined the queue for the Virgin desk. It was about 10AM when I got to the desk again, the plane started boarding in ten minutes. I explained about my hand luggage being over weight earlier. My luggage now only contained my Xbox but when we put it on the scale it read, 8KG. “What!” I thought; when I had weighed it that morning it had been two and a half kilos less. A flashback of that moment came to me and I saw my Xbox alone on the scale, not in the bag. The combined weight was still over the limit at a cost of £80.
Yoko stepped in arguing for me in Japanese. I didn’t have any idea what she was saying but the lady listened and then nodded. She put a sticker on my hand luggage and then stepped from her desk and behind me to put a sticker on my shoulder bag. I didn’t know what was going on, I was sure she would feel the weight of my bag which, thanks to the skinny nature of laptops these days, had a deceptively light appearance. But she didn’t, she sat down behind her desk again and Yoko gestured that I could go.
We five stood together, me now smiling, before the entrance to the security area, the real border between Japan and the nowhere between airports. We talked, I apologised, they told me it had been exciting. We took some picture and asked someone for a picture of us.
It was well and truly time to for me to go. I couldn’t stall any longer. We had a group hug, final goodbyes, well wishing and then I joined the queue.
I can remember that moment from different perspectives. I see my hands rolling my bag, slowly following the queue, I see the others standing on the opposite side of the barrier, I feel my wavering expression and the tears welling up in my eyes. Alternatively, I can see myself standing in the queue looking upset, Yoko, Kizuna, Kosuke and Il Heung around me as if I had still been standing among them watching someone else.
I was split then, a thing in pieces. I felt like I was less than I used to be, that people could walk through where I was standing and feel only a whisper against their skin.
My body reached the front of the queue and it took out my laptop to show to the security guards. The metal detector confirmed that I didn’t exist and my hands gathered all of my possessions back together. Walking towards the escalator to the gates I became whole again. My friends came back into view; they had been waiting for me on the other side of the soundproofed glass wall between us.
I touched Yoko’s hand from the other side of the glass and got on the descending escalator. The four familiar faces slid out of the final frame of Japan until their floor became my ceiling.
Japan had ended.
A woman came up to me, she knew my name. “Just you” she said as we began running towards the gate. “Yabai,” I replied, which is informal Japanese for when you are in trouble. She laughed and seemed like the most cheerful woman in any airport in the world.
At the gate I was the last person to go through. My window seat was next to a Japanese lady who politely stood up to let me sit down. I looked out of the window at Japan for the final time.
We flew.
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